A Peculiar Case of Mistaken Identity
by beesandbrews
Summary: John's lost wallet leads to a case of mistaken identity and the uncovering of a convoluted plot by Sherlock that has ramifications for Mycroft and the British government. Contains depictions of violence and medical drama.


Jonno Wilson was a moderately successful burglar. He always planned his jobs carefully, checking out the lay of the land for noisy dogs and inconvenient security systems, and never went for the impulsive score. It was a method passed down from father to son, burgling being something of a family trade, and it had, up until the fatal day when he'd been nicked, served him well.

Getting arrested had been a humbling and sobering experience. But because it was his first offence, the magistrate had handed down a modest tariff. His mum had laid a consoling hand upon Jonno's shoulder and called it a 'rite of passage' and 'an occupational hazard', and told him not to get too cut up about it. To please her, Jonno had done his time with a light heart and a smile, earning praise from the bulls for his good behaviour. He decided, as he walked away from the gates of Blantyre House, that the occasional stretch was nothing to be feared, even if it was something to be avoided.

But good behaviour couldn't keep him in booze and betting slips, and after a period of assiduously clean living, Jonno felt it was time to get back into the game. He washed and polished his ancient cargo van, giving it an air of modest respectability, splashed out on a new set of window cleaning tools, and began to eyeball likely looking jobs.

Finding the wallet had given him the final push he needed to get on with it. He'd been on his way back from visiting a mate in the trade when there it was, bold as brass, lying on the pavement at his feet. Jonno decided, as he scooped it up and tucked it away safely in his jacket pocket, that the owner's loss was his gain, and a sign that Dame Fortune was once again smiling down upon him. The contents had been a veritable gold mine: twenty-five quid, a credit card that he could sell on to a fellow at his local, and a driving licence whose photo was close enough it could be his on an off day. Having an alternate identity was no bad thing, even though with DNA and fingerprints it was more of a stall than a dodge, not like the old days when you could call yourself what you liked and no one would be the wiser. That afternoon, feeling quite emboldened, Jonno whistled with cheery confidence as he put on a pair of window washer's white coveralls before loading his new squeegee and bucket into his van and setting off for work.

The owners were on holiday at the house he'd selected. He'd watched them drive away the day before, the man huffing and puffing under a small mountain of suitcases whilst his wife made half a dozen calls on her mobile, apparently double and triple checking their arrangements. He waved at the neighbour next door. He'd washed her windows as part of his reccy, the view from her back garden had given him an excellent look in at his real target. The house was neatly kept but laughably insecure, given the local asking prices. But sometimes toffs were touchingly naïve. He gave the front door panels a final swipe with his polishing cloth and then sauntered through the gate and into the back garden to begin his real work.

The small window in the back door broke with the barest tinkle of falling glass. Jonno cleared away the shards and put them in his washing up bucket. He took a shufty through the usual places householders kept their valuables when they stored them in the kitchen; the freezer and the biscuit tin, and came up empty. Then he went into the study and inspected the desk.

He found housekeeping money, all topped up according to the notation on the envelope, in spite of the holiday. He rifled quickly through the drawers and found files of household documents and credit card bills. He took the first page of the oldest statements to sell on to his mate. It was a dying racket, in Jonno's view. With more and more people shifting to electronic statements it was getting difficult to steal identities using the traditional methods, but Mickey, who specialised in financial fraud, insisted that Luddites who refused to switch over to computers would keep him in clover.

There were some other papers that looked important. Jonno paused to study them. Sometimes people paid well for letters and such, if they were juicy enough. These looked like they were written in some sort of code. He stuck them into his pocket, along with a couple of memory sticks, to sell on to another mate who dealt in such things, and then he went upstairs for the jewellery and other small valuables. In the bedroom and upstairs sitting room there was more than enough to fill his buckets; antique porcelain dust collectors that were hard to identify but would bring a good price, and expensive but tasteful jewellery and watches. It was a good haul and would be a decent pay day, even after the fences took their shares. Jonno was pleased as he let himself out of the house, washed a few more windows for show, and then replaced his gear in the van.

He wasn't ready for what happened next.

Two men came up from behind and threw Jonno against the van, mashing his face against the sun-warmed side panel. At first he thought them Old Bill, and resigned to his fate he said, "All right, leave off, it's a fair cop." After all, they'd find the readies and papers in the pocket of his coveralls, along with the other stuff in the buckets under the rags, and know in about two seconds that it wasn't his.

The cosh that came down behind his left ear connected with a dull thump, and then everything went black.

* * *

John Watson wasn't exactly secure in the knowledge of when his day had decided to go sliding off of the rails, but he was sure that it most definitely had. It would have been easy, but possibly unfair, to place the blame squarely on the elegantly-trim shoulders of Sherlock Holmes. He was, after all, the one whose case had kept the pair of them out until two in the morning, leaving John sleep deprived and scrambling to catch his Oxford-bound train to the conference on public health and infectious diseases.

But the ill-fortune that had dogged him for the rest of the day had nothing to do with his flatmate. John had forgotten his mobile all by himself and it was his carelessness that had resulted in the loss of his wallet. It was a modicum of dumb-luck and not foresight that had caused him to hastily tuck his train ticket and his Oyster card in his shirt-front pocket and spared him their loss as well.

The blame for inflicting a mass coma on the conference attendees could only be laid at the feet of the organisers who had found possibly the five most boring authorities on their chosen topics to speak. Their monotone delivered and graph-laden presentations had more to do with massaging statistics to show favourable results than diagnosing and treating the most vulnerable members of the community. To John the conference had been dry, dull, and for the most part (other than the hour he'd spent wandering around the exhibitions hall) useless. Ducking out to catch an earlier train had seemed a sensible course of action. He had dropped into his seat and almost immediately faded out.

The blare of the train's whistle roused John from his uneasy slumber. His instinct for danger, honed in battle and kept sharp by association with Sherlock, added its own clarion cry. He took a deep breath, flooding his lungs with oxygen, and then leant forward, assuming a crash position, just as the nose of the engine ploughed into an elderly Vauxhall, tearing it in half. The hydraulic brakes shrieked as the commuter train jumped the tracks, spilling passengers out of their seats as the cars tumbled onto their sides.

John did the only logical thing he could do; he forced himself to relax and not fight against the momentum, and he hoped like hell that someone was watching out for them. When the train finally came to an agonised rest, he scrambled painfully to his feet, surveyed the damage, and began to pull other survivors from the wreckage.

* * *

When he came to himself, Jonno's head hurt. He was tied to a chair with gaffer's tape, in what appeared to be a disused garage. It smelt of motor oil and paint and other things one expected to smell in a garage, although there were no cars or tools, and it looked like there hadn't been for some time.

He frowned. Clearly whoever grabbed him weren't the Old Bill. They had rules about handling prisoners, and bundling them off to disused garages hadn't been considered respectable police practice since before his granddad's time.

"Oi!" he shouted, and then wished he hadn't. Shouting had made the lump on the back of his head throb and a wave of nausea rise up his throat. He swallowed hard to keep from being sick and looked around again. The two pillocks who'd grabbed him were in the far corner of the room going over his takings from the burglary. They looked over at him menacingly and Jonno had the distinct impression that his day had taken a sharp turn for the worse as the pair stalked towards him.

"It looks like your pal Sherlock left you out to dry," the first pillock said. He was roughly six feet tall and muscled so thickly he seemed to have no neck, in contrast to his pal who was whipcord thin and seemed to be made of tied bundles of wire. Both of their faces were mashed and distorted. It took Jonno a few seconds to work that out, his head was throbbing so badly, but he finally realised it was because they were both wearing stockings as masks under their flat brimmed caps.

"Eh?" Jonno replied, utterly flummoxed. There was only one Sherlock he was aware of and that was Sherlock Holmes, the internet detective everyone was making such a palaver over.

"Don't be cute, Doctor Watson," the second pillock snapped. "So what was the plan? Fake a burglary? Make it look like the plans were taken as an accident?"

"Plans?" Jonno thought of the weird papers he'd taken from the desk. He supposed those were the plans the whip-wire kidnapper was talking about, but he couldn't imagine why anyone would hide secret plans in amongst their bank statements in an unlocked drawer. "I don't know what you're talking about, mate. Who's Doctor Whatsits?"

Pillock Number One flipped open the wallet Jonno had found and showed him the driving licence. "Stop playing cute," he snarled, radiating menace.

"Christ," Jonno thought to himself. He knew there had been something familiar about the name on the licence, but he'd been too chuffed at the resemblance of the photograph to give it more than a passing thought. Sherlock Holmes went after the crème de la crème of the criminal fraternity; international jewel thieves and such-like, and that was just the cases that made the newspapers. Who knew what else he got up to? Crushing spy rings and recovering secret documents might be what he did in his spare time.

"I still say we should kill him," Pillock Number Two said. "Live he's a liability. He can identify us."

"Live, he's a bargaining chip," Pillock Number One corrected. "It's said Sherlock Holmes is uncommonly attached to the doctor, here. He's loyal that way. We can use that."

"But we've got the plans," Pillock Number Two argued. "Let's just blow. If you want to tip off Holmes, fine. But after we've hit the air. All the boss wants is the plans. We've got them, so let's deliver!"

Pillock Number One scowled at his partner, but after a minute or so, he finally pressed his lips together, glanced over at Jonno, and then nodded his head. He pulled a short black sap out of his pocket, and Jonno's lights went out again.

* * *

The train passengers were lucky. John hadn't been the only doctor to skip out early from the medical conference. They went to work triaging the victims, comforting the walking wounded and tasking them with small jobs, the better to keep them calm and focused. For the seriously injured they did their best, using ties and novelty tee-shirts promoting next generation wonder drugs as impromptu tourniquets and bandages to supplement the meagre supplies of the train's first aid boxes.

It was horrific. It was chaotic. John felt a bizarre wave of happy nostalgia settle over him as he worked and wondered if there was something broken deep within him that therapy could never fix.

He dismissed the notion as pointless maundering as he used a bridal magazine as a splint, immobilising a young woman's broken forearm within a makeshift cast of its glossy pages. He didn't know where the roll of tape had come from that he used to secure his creation, but he was grateful for it all the same. He wiped away the prospective bride's tears with the pad of his thumb and handed her off to one of the walking wounded before taking a breath and moving on to his next patient.

* * *

Sherlock Holmes shut off the televised coverage of the railway disaster and did the logical thing; he rang John's mobile.

As he anticipated, it went straight to voicemail. Undeterred and not yet overly concerned – after all, John might have set his phone to vibrate as a professional courtesy towards the conference's speakers – he sent a text.

'The Oxford Express has been involved in a collision. Were you on board? Y/N -SH'

He set the mobile down and waited for the reply. Unless there was a woman involved, John always replied promptly to texts, even if his response was 'Sod off, Sherlock, I'm busy.'

The device remained frustratingly mute. And though he loathed to admit it, Sherlock became concerned. Deciding to eliminate all other likely possibilities before he allowed his concern to blossom into full-fledged worry, he went upstairs to John's bedroom. There on the bedside table, connected to the charger, was John's mobile. The volume wasn't muted, but set so low as to be barely audible to a sleeper. In his mad rush to make his morning train, John had forgotten his phone. Unsure if he should be relieved or concerned by the oversight, Sherlock replaced the phone in its charging cradle and went back downstairs to check his sources, hoping to get additional details of the ongoing tragedy.

* * *

Jonno Wilson's kidnappers contrived a simple plan. They bundled Jonno into the boot of their car, drove him to Baker Street, and dropped him off, still tied and gagged, onto the doorstep of 221B. They then rang the bell and scarpered, abandoning the stolen car they'd used that day several streets away.

The kidnappers, still under the mistaken notion that they'd returned John Watson to his rightful home and hearth, were content. They reckoned their employer would be pleased by their cleverness. The coded documents had been recovered without their breaking and entering into the house, eliminating any chance forensic evidence would tie them to the scene. Any traces left by Doctor Watson would give credence to the notion there had been a legitimate burglary, sending investigators onto a false trail. And perhaps most importantly, they'd given no reason for Sherlock Holmes to set the hounds of Hell on their tails. It was, in their view, a job well done.

* * *

Instead of yelling for Mrs Hudson, as was his habit when the front doorbell rang, Sherlock leapt out of his chair and bounded down the stairs two at a time. There were only two reasons for a ring of that particular persistence: a client, which at the moment he had very little interest in, and a member of the constabulary delivering unpleasant news. He was in the entry hall in moments and with a wrench, Sherlock opened the door and looked out onto the street.

A body fell onto his feet. A smallish body of a familiar shape, clad for some unknown reason in a pair of white workman's coveralls. Sherlock felt his heart clench in his chest as he dropped to inspect the damage that had been wrought and noticed almost immediately that the shape of the man's ear was wrong. He took a steadying breath and peered closer. With a flood of relief surging in a most undignified way through his body, he realised that although there was an uncanny resemblance, the bound figure was not, in fact, John.

Temporarily confounded by why a stranger had been dumped onto his doorstep, Sherlock carried the unconscious man upstairs and deposited him on the sofa before going into the kitchen for the first aid kit. He removed several items and set to work reviving his unanticipated guest. He cut the tape binding the man's wrists and ankles, noting that the hands were less refined than John's and used to manual labour, and then broke a phial of amyl nitrate under the man's nose.

The popper had the desired effect, provoking a sudden and profound return to consciousness. At first the eyes that met Sherlock's were unfocused, but slowly intelligence seeped back into them as Jonno struggled to sit up. His hand went to a spot behind his left ear and he touched it gingerly. "Oh, me poor head." He looked up at Sherlock with a faintly outraged expression. "Three times they coshed me!"

Sherlock activated a chemical cold pack before handing it over. He noted clinically that the blows to the head appeared to be the only damage wrought by the man's assailants.

"Ta very much," Jonno said and placed the cold pack against his skull. "Don't s'ppose you've got a kettle brewing? I could do with a cuppa."

Tea, Sherlock thought with dry amusement; the universal British cure-all for everything from inclement weather to shock. If he was being honest, he could do with a cup himself. He went back into the kitchen and prepared a tray. When he re-emerged for the second time his guest was staring fixedly at the television.

"Tragedy, that is. Bloody shame." Wincing from a renewed throbbing in his head and with an overall mournful expression, Jonno pointed at the ongoing coverage of the train derailment.

With an effort, Sherlock dismissed his concern for John. Emergency services had mobilised an all out effort to clear the tracks and care for the survivors. As for the dead, they were beyond hope. He shut off the television and poured tea. "Your name?"

"Jonno," Jonno replied. "Jonno Wilson."

Sherlock sipped his tea. Though there were thousands of names stored in his memory palace, Jonno Wilson rang no bells. There was however a Howard Wilson, a former resident of the East End, now deceased, who had once been a top cracksman before he lost his nerve and returned to the traditional family business of common thieving. He wondered if the man before him was related, but decided that later might be a better time to explore his guest's antecedents. "And how is it you have come to be deposited on my doorstep?"

"Bit of a story, that," Jonno replied. "And I'm not sure I understand it all m'self, truth be told." For a moment Jonno debated with himself and then he nodded, as if he'd reached a decision. "It's like this, Mr Holmes. I'm a burglar. Nothing fancy. Straight up breaking and entering is my game."

He looked up at Sherlock. Sherlock nodded back that he understood the distinction between classes of thieves.

"And I was on a job, see? Nice house over in Wesley Close. The couple gone on holiday. I thought it was going to be dead simple. In, pick up a few small and easy to dispose of items, and out again." He looked up again. "And it was. All like clockwork, until those two blokes showed up and queered the works."

There was a point to this story, Sherlock was sure of it. He just wished that Jonno would get to it. Reflexively, he made a 'get on with it' hand gesture which Jonno missed entirely because he was busy adding more sugar to his tea. He took a long, slurping draught before continuing his story.

"First they threw me up against the side of me van and slugged me. Then, when I came to again, they'd taken me away. I tried to explain that I wasn't your pal, but they weren't having it."

"My pal?" Sherlock interjected.

Jonno nodded. "Yeah, that doctor friend of yours. See, the thing of it was, this morning, I found his wallet and I had it on me. They found it and decided that Doctor Watson was on a job for you, see? Lifting some weird papers the bloke what owned the place had in his desk."

Sherlock stared down at Jonno with a gimlet gaze. "What sort of papers?"

Jonno shrugged. "Dunno, do I? They looked like they was in some sort of code or somethin'. I stuck'm in me pocket, because I have a mate that deals in the sort of papers people want back, letters and such-like. I thought maybe he might make something off'm and share the proceeds. So I stuck'm in me pocket along with the rest." He frowned down at the leg of his coveralls as if noticing something, and then brightened as he patted the long narrow pocket that ran from hip to knee. "Wait a minute … " Jonno's stubby fingers snaked down into the recess and when he pulled them back out again, there was a memory stick between them. "Look at that." He waved the stick at Sherlock. "They didn't get everything, now did they?" He shook his head dolefully, silently remonstrating the poor tradecraft, and then offered the stick to Sherlock. "Sloppy," he muttered in disapproval.

Sloppy it may have been, and Sherlock could certainly understand a craftsman taking umbrage at another's slipshod ways, but he was grateful for the oversight all the same. It was indeed a peculiar situation and one woefully short in relevant facts to provide an explanation as to why Jonno's assailants had come to their erroneous conclusion. "Whose house was it you were breaking into, Jonno?"

"According to their bank statement, a cove by the name of Roger Henderson and his good lady wife Matilda," Jonno replied. "Well off, they was. The jewellery was quality but not flash, and they left two hundred in housekeeping in the desk drawer, even though they was going on holiday."

The name Roger Henderson struck a discordant bell. It was something Mycroft had said about government secrets going astray. "Of course!" Sherlock shouted as the connection fell into place. Roger Henderson was the press officer for the Department of Energy and Climate Change. Who better to get his hands on sensitive documents relating to the government's energy policy? He must have smuggled copies of documents out of their offices and then arranged to have them collected from his home during the faux-burglary, unknown he'd be targeted for a genuine burglary by Jonno Wilson.

Sherlock took the memory stick and stuck it into his laptop. The files were encrypted with a DECC key. He could break it, of course, but he doubted the secrets revealed would be worth the ticking off he'd get from Mycroft. He decided against it and sent his brother a text outlining the situation instead.

* * *

The two-tone wail of ambulances and emergency response vehicles were a welcome sound, as was the cup of hot sweet tea a police officer pressed into John's hands when the arriving help finally got themselves organised enough to dive into the fray. He sipped at the tea gratefully as the officer took down his details. The grim recounting duly noted, the constable led John to a coach tasked with taking the uninjured survivors and the ambulatory wounded the rest of the way home to London.

Weary to his bones and trembling with delayed shock and exhaustion, John collapsed against the padded seat back and closed his eyes. He lost consciousness almost immediately. Memories of Afghanistan and scenes from the train wreck tumbled and merged, creating fresh nightmares. From time to time he woke with a jerk and a tremor. He watched the cars in the lane opposite flash past the coach for a few minutes' time before his fatigue got the better of him and he descended once more into a fitful sleep.

* * *

The railway PR people splashed out and hired an entire rank of black cabs to ferry the coach passengers to their doorsteps. John recognised the driver who offered him a lift. His name was Miles and he had once assisted Sherlock, driving him and John around town for several hours as they trailed a suspect in a kidnapping case. John greeted Miles with a weary smile as he clambered into the back seat for the final leg of his journey home.

He'd done good work. They'd all had. The boring conference hadn't been such a waste after all, John thought as he smiled ironically. But now his work for the day was done and he could finally tend to his own painful, though minor, injuries and maybe even fall apart a little as he began the long delayed process of reacting to what he'd been through. Unfortunately, of course, his need for privacy meant that Mycroft was visiting and Sherlock had a client.

"What's going on?" John asked. The man sitting on the sofa wore painter's coveralls and a faintly intimidated expression which John understood all too well, having himself been the subject of Mycroft Holmes close scrutiny on more than one occasion.

"In a roundabout way, Jonno Wilson has come to return your wallet," Sherlock explained. "He found it in the street."

"It's all there," Jonno said earnestly. "Didn't even take a finders fee, did I?"

Under the circumstances, John thought it would be rude to doubt Jonno's honesty. He tucked the wallet away without inspecting its contents and said, "Thanks."

Mycroft unfolded himself from Sherlock's favourite chair and rose. He inclined his head politely towards John. "You appear to have had a trying day, John, and I believe that any business Mr Wilson and I have to conduct can be done elsewhere." He turned to Sherlock and smiled a serpentine smile. "Brother mine, your unwitting assistance in this matter was appreciated as always. Come along, Mr Wilson."

Jonno Wilson frowned fretfully in Mycroft's direction. "You sure I ain't nicked?"

"Quite sure," Sherlock replied before Mycroft could react. "You've done Queen and Country a great service today." He smiled impishly at Mycroft. "There may even be a reward."

Mycroft shot a veiled look of irritation at Sherlock before regarding Jonno with a bland expression. "Quite. Shall we?" He made an 'after you' gesture and then swept out of the room in Jonno's wake.

"What did I miss?" John asked as Sherlock poured a large brandy and handed it over.

"A peculiar case of mistaken identity," Sherlock explained. "Jonno Wilson burgled a house that was meant to be burgled by someone else. Because he had your wallet and bore a passing resemblance to the photograph on your driving license, the burglars, who weren't really burglars but spies, decided that he was you."

"And that was a good thing?" John asked. After his long and fraught day he was already muddled. The brandy was going straight to his head, and he hoped that the explanation to Mycroft's presence wasn't going to be an overcomplicated one.

Sherlock looked down at the glass in his hands, avoiding John's gaze as he continued to explain. "The agents in question apparently read the tabloids. It appears they decided they had a better chance of making a clean getaway if I wasn't set on avenging your murder. So they returned Jonno to Baker Street and by doing so, exposed the entire plot."

"Huh," John said, because it seemed like something should be said, but he was too tired to come up with anything more coherent. He couldn't help noticing how Sherlock's voice had gone rough with suppressed emotion and he found himself on the verge of choking up. Feeling awkward, he cleared his throat and then said, "Well, I guess I'm grateful for that. It might have been Jonno Wilson's neck saved this time, but next time it could be mine."

"Indeed," Sherlock replied, rather brusquely as he picked up his violin and contemplated the strings. "You had a bit of an adventure yourself, I take it."

John nodded. "Train derailed. Yeah."

"Your stiffened gait suggests you've suffered multiple major muscle pulls," Sherlock declared. "There's a graze on your right wrist that appears to extend up your forearm, and another along your right cheek. Are you quite all right?"

"Bumps and bruises," John replied, grateful that his instincts had been good and his luck had kept him from more severe damage. A montage of twisted and broken bodies flashed before his eyes and he had to blink hard to banish them. He disguised the gesture by taking a long swallow of his drink.

"Then what you need is a quiet night," Sherlock said. "There's a fresh box of Epsom salts in the bathroom cabinet. I suggest you use a liberal amount in your bathwater while I ring for a takeaway."

"Thank you, Doctor Holmes," John said without sarcasm as he met Sherlock's gaze and saw genuine concern. "I'll be sure to do that." He drained the rest of his glass and set it down on the table.

Sherlock nodded back and then glanced down at his violin. "Do you mind if I play?"

John shook his head. He was home. He was bruised, but otherwise unharmed. A night in listening to Sherlock as he drew complicated melodies from the strings of his violin sounded like the perfect way to wind down from his long and taxing day.

/end


End file.
